Tag Archives: New Jersey

My penis is smaller today. I haven’t measured it but I’m fairly certain it’s actually shrunk over the last 48-hours. But I’m also oddly, more in touch with my inner beauty and that’s got to be a plus right? If anyone wants to talk about how they “feel” today just leave a note in the comments section. I’ll be sure to respond.

I’ve just spent the last 48 hours or so with five vaginas … err ladies during a road trip to the Poconos so they could visit Camelbeach Mountain Water Park.

Not number seven!. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I can happily report that none of them killed each other and that I’m basically unscathed.

If you haven’t been following along, and why would you have been honestly, I have just returned from a two-day trip in which my wife, her daughter, her daughter’s partner, her partner’s daughter, her partner’s daughters friend (Jesus Christ that was hard!) and I went to the Poconos to visit a water park. I’m 43 years old. I don’t have kids of my own and the only thing I’d rather do less than visit a water park is to put a nail up my pee-pee hole.

If you had a gun to my head and was given the option, “Water park, or briefly put a this nail in your pee-pee hole,” I’d have to think about it. I mean the nail shit would be over in moments, right? That’s an hour of being uncomfortable at best. Really it’s a no-brainer when you think about it.

But no one had a gun to my head nor did anyone offer up the nail option so off to the Poconos we went.

While the three-hour drive there and back was basically uneventful (why do you fucking people insist on doing the speed limit in the passing lane for fuck’s sake!) I did learn a few valuable lessons about the female psyche.

For example, how much fucking aspirin do you fucking chicks need in a given 24-hour period anyway? Why the constant discussions of dosages too? Just take the fucking pill and swallow it. If it’s too much — who cares — and if it’s too little — take more. Also, why does someone always have to not feel good? Why is someone always mad at someone else in the group? What the fuck is that? Is that some kind of female-pack mentality thing those of us with a penis don’t have the genes to understand? I sure don’t.

Anyway, thanks to the invention of smart phones and head phones no one talked much anyway. Someone in the back of the car would giggle or laugh outright and Dagmar and I would be the only ones to hear them. Maybe the headphones are a good thing, If they had talked I would have shushed them because I planned on torturing everyone the entire way with NPR talk radio.

Upon arriving in the area I was a bit shocked. I thought the Poconos was some posh place? Why did you lie to me America? I would have settled for, “It has a lot of cheap hotels and tourist-trap bullshit.” Really, I would have been just fine with that. It’s all gaudy bullshit and cheap tourist crap. Which is fine, really, I just thought — hell I don’t know what I thought.

It’s this … (Photo credit: TunnelBug)

If New Jersey ever successfully invades the French Riviera I know what the result will look like, is all.

… not this. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’d like to say the water park was a nightmare of epic proportions, but it wasn’t. I was allowed to act as the automatic cash dispenser for the ladies when it came to the bar. In a development I never expected, the water park had a bar right in the middle of it. I was allowed to park my boring ass right at the bar for the duration. I rode not a single vortex o’ pee, nor a “flow of kids screaming like idiots” ride the entire time. In fact, I didn’t even get wet.

It was perfect really.

If you’re above the age of 40 and still enjoy those rides good on you. Really I mean that. I could just not give a fuck is the issue. Call me a killjoy, call me boring, I’d just rather sip cold beers and people watch. All five vagin … I mean ladies … I was with understood that and left me in charge of towel-watching while they frolicked about the park and I put away $6 Corona beers.

I came to find I had company though. I wasn’t the only stick in the mud. More than a few parents confessed they had gone on not a single ride and were happy to let their respective kids run wild while they nursed their alcoholism beside me.

Some asshole, and by asshole I mean a really funny dude, made a point that we had to remain clothed at waterparks in ‘Merica during last week’s blog update. Which, yeah, I had that coming.

Two last points about the place. America, you’ve lost weight haven’t you? Really you look a bit thinner than last time I was here 18 months ago. What’s your secret? Not all of you of course, and there could be some confirmation bias going on here, but on the whole, you look thinner. I’d say in another 24 months you’re going to fit into that dress you bought because you don’t, overall, look as fat as I remember. Then again, it was a water park and maybe fat people don’t go to them.

OK, I’m done with the fat jokes.

Point two.

When the fuck did smoking outdoors become regulated? Land of the free indeed. This area had two smoking areas, while outdoors and you couldn’t smoke anywhere but … OK fuck it, Europe is doing that too now. Trouble is in Europe I can’t understand the jeers. Here I can. “Honey come back here you don’t want to walk over there, that’s where the people smoke, you don’t like smoke do you,” and such. Can you leave us to our coffin nails with a bit of peace, is that too much to ask?

Next up farm country, cows and lots of deer. Dagmar and I are going to kick it into low gear with a quick trip to upstate New York starting tomorrow.

The woman that keeps my house clean and has fixes delicious food and I just had an argument about current events.

I couldn’t be happier.

I was going to use one of the images that clearly shows Whitney thought that drugs, other than crack, weren't whack, but really that doesn't matter ... yo

After nearly 20 years of marriage I’ve got to admit it was unexpected. It was like having a repressed sexual fantasy finally play out. She and I can predict each other’s positions on anything with laser like accuracy, most of the time. Sometimes it really, really, really pisses me off even. I’m in full pumped out chest with righteous rage about an issue only to find she completely agrees. My point is we can disagree but it’s only a matter of how far we agree with a position. It’s like arguing who is more right. Which is like arguing which cookie tastes better, when they both taste good.

Dagmar and I, and the comment’s section of 90 percent of the internet’s news sites, disagree about New Jersey’s Governor Christie’s decision to lower the American flag to half mast in honor of Whitney Houston. We see this very differently.

Fortunately unlike the internet Dagmar hasn’t called me a racist, a Nazi or an asshole (well not in reference to this particular issue anyway).

But there should no argument. Christie has every right to lower the state’s flag even if it doesn’t make this decision a good one. Christie also has every right to make an (even bigger) ass of himself.

Here’s the awesome part of the story. New Jersey has lowered the flag for each of the 31 service members from that state who gave their lives in the war on terror. I have no idea how many other states do that but they all should.

They do it when Presidents and other high-ranking elected officials pass away. This is also good. They do it when a law-enforcement officer or firefighter dies. Also good.

Here’s the non-awesome part of the story. They’re going to do it to honor Whitney Houston. Not so good.

Even if — and think about this for a moment please — Whitney Houston had lived a life that was pure and chaste it wouldn’t change one single thing. Lowering the flag to honor a pop culture icon is wrong, no matter how popular the icon.

It is. I’m sorry it is.

Lowering the flag is a gesture that honors the individual’s service or sacrifice for the good of the nation, state, community, what have you. It will be appropriate when former President George W. Bush dies. Even though I didn’t agree with a lot of the things he did as president, I cannot deny the fact that he served and sacrificed for our nation. Our flag should be and will be flown at half-staff in his honor.

The anniversary of Sept. 11 is an appropriate time to fly the flag at half mast. Or when popular singers die, whichever.

Only that’s not what I, and a lot of others, thought lowering the flag was for. We kind of thought it was honor, sacrifice and service. While Whitney may indeed have done a lot of “good things in her life,” as the Governor said, it’s my opinion that he’s cheapened the tradition for every other person it’s been lowered for since then or in the future. If you’re willing to lower it for a singer, no matter how good a singer she might have been, who made millions and millions of dollars through her fans, what message are you sending to the family of a police officer that is killed in the line of duty in downtown Newark?

Whitney might have had a heart of gold, she might have adopted every stray puppy she ever saw, she might have loved little babies, been really fun at parties and, for all I know, she might have farted $100 bills.

None of that is service to or sacrifice for the nation. None of it.

We do know she sang very well, she sang so well that millions of teenage girls in the eighties pissed off their boyfriends by playing her songs over and over and over. I’m 41 so I know this first hand, do the math.

But really that’s it. Her music touched so many lives though, I hear. But how exactly it ‘touched so many lives’ remains open for debate. If her songs made you cry, smile, laugh or love that’s great. It has nothing to do with, here’s those words again, service or sacrifice.

Her voice made me cringe because I knew I’d be cursed with whatever song I had just heard. The song would stick in my head for a few hours, but that would be an example of ‘touching my life’ I guess.

The special musical tribute concerts, television shows and what not that are no doubt about to hit the airwaves and the internet, those are appropriate ‘tributes’. Honoring her with that sort of venue is appropriate and I’ve no argument against it.

I really hope they decide not to do this, not because I have anything against Whitney Houston, but because I have something for all legitimate heroes and leaders the flag will be lowered for in the future.

There’s some really easy jokes to make about New Jersey being full of idiots, which isn’t true or even relevant (though looking at what’s come out of there recently, Jersey Shore, it’s a legitimate question). So I’ll avoid that joke. The governor there is, if his weight is any indication, no stranger to vices. His vices just take the form of a Twinkie-eating contest that never ever ends.

Chris Christie hopes that by giving state honors to victims of substance abuse his overeating will get the recognition it deserves, and it better or he’ll sit on you.

It’s not a joke at all though. It cheapens what the honor of lowering the flag for those that really deserve it..

Truth be known after about five minutes of listening to me rant about this Dagmar told me to shut up. After 20 years of marriage, I knew what she meant; she meant I should stop talking. So I started typing.